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Daily Reviews Summary 04/14/10

Danamics LMX and LMX Superleggera Liquid Metal CPU Cooler ReviewITShootOut.com are reviewing two 'liquid metal' coolers from Danish company Danamics, comparing them to water cooling solutions from Corsair and CoolIT, and to Thermalright's IFX-14 heat sink.

Danamics assures us that Cyberdyne Systems had no part in the liquid metal technology used in the LMX, but the Sodium Potassium Alloy used within the cooler is still pretty exciting stuff. As you’d expect the liquid metal is extremely effective at transferring heat, and unlike water doesn’t require any moving parts to circulate. We compare it today to the Corsair H50, the CoolIT Domino and Thermalright's IFX-14 heat sink.

Testing a video card isn't a 5 minute job. To be honest, it's not even a 5 hour job or a 1 day job. From the minute a video card arrives ‘till the moment I can send it off to my editor, many, many hours are put into the review; everything from photography to benchmarking.

The HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB from Sapphire today is getting a preview; this is something we tend to only do with cards that we look at in Taiwan or at a trade show. The reason we’re doing it for this model is that it deserves it! – There’s only four samples released worldwide right now and we want to bring you some information as soon as possible.

Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-W370 is a solid point-and-shoot camera with a myriad of features which give the decently-priced camera that includes a 7X optical zoom lens, a 3-inch screen and 720p HD video recording.

Corsair's Nova V128 series SSD isn't quite the speed demon that their Force series is on paper, but we've already seen other SSDs with Indilinx controllers punch out decent benchmark results. Really, it's likely a matter of how well their firmware performs. We show that and more in our in-depth review.

If you are of a certain age, the name Nova conjures up visions of the beauty from the original Planet of the Apes. That's probably not what the marketing folks at Corsair had in mind when they gave their new Indilinx 'Barefoot' controller-based series its moniker; although she too, was barefoot in the movie. Ramblings aside, the folks over at Corsair have been busy serving up SSD's as of late and we recently took a look at the 100GB version (part number CSSDV128GB2BRKT) of their Force series SSD line which performed extremely well in most of our tests. Today we'll be giving the Nova Series V128 its turn on the test bench to see how well it fares...

ASUS is the first one to implement new technologies for God-knows-which-time around, so it’s no big surprise that they were the ones to ship us the first notebook with NVIDIA Optimus technology. We’ve recently described this technology in detail on our website, so we won’t delve into too much detail as far as its theoretical background is concerned, instead rather just reminding you of the basic concepts it’s based on and then switch to our impressions from the hands-on experience…

The XClio Hovercraft notebook cooler doesn't look like your average notebook cooler. The XClio Hovercraft has a very contemporary, almost futuristic look to it. The Hovercraft comes with six 4mm LED fans that deliver an ample flow of air underneath the laptop for maximum cooling. If you look at XClio and their style of accessories and computer cases, the Hovercraft follows suit.

Xigmatek NRP-PC602 600W Power Supply ReviewHardwareHeaven.com posted a review on the Xigmatek NRP-PC602 600W Power Supply

Today HardwareHeaven are going to have a look at a new PSU from Xigmatek which is designed with high electrical efficiency and a value orientated price in mind. It has to compete against many similar products from several manufacturers so will really have to excel in one area to stand out.

Sticking with the Juniper core that we saw in the Radeon HD 5770, today's review focuses on its little brother --the HD 5750. Just as the 5770 was effectively half the 5870, the 5750 is half the 5850 utilising the RV840 core manufactured with a 40nm process. Essentially the ATI Radeon HD 5770 HD 5750 models fill the mainstream segment of the DirectX 11 GPU market. Clearly nVidia's launch of the GTX470 and GTX480 cards is targeted at the high-end user and so ATI still rules the roost in terms of the mainstream and lower-end areas of the marketplace.

So how will the 5750 compare to the 5770? We've got two versions to put through their paces both courtesy of Sapphire: the reference version of the card and a special overclocked Vapor-X model. Let's delve a little deeper...

New for this year CoolIT introduces the ECO Advanced Liquid Cooling system, a simplified version of the Domino without the LCD control panel. Similar to other Asetek designs, such as the Corsair H50 and NorthQ Siberian Tiger, the CoolIT ECO system consists of a combination pump and block, a 120mm fan and heat exchanger and the tubing to connect them. Like the Domino, this pre-filled and self-contained system appears easy to install and maintain, and the target price keeps it affordable for the average user.

ModXStream Pro is a power supply series from OCZ featuring a modular cabling system and a very attractive price tag, at this moment featuring 500 W, 600 W and 700 W models, with the manufacturer promising that these units can deliver their labeled wattage at 40º C. We've already reviewed the 600 W version and were quite impressed by its performance. Let's see if the 500 W model is also a good pick.

During the Consumer Electronics Show which took place in early January of this year, we showcased a myriad of upcoming products in our coverage of the event. Of the literally thousands of things we saw at CES, however, we'd consider only a handful of them to be truly stand-out products. One of those geek-lust worthy products, at least in our opinion, was the slick Alienware M11x.

We gave you somewhat more than a glimpse of the M11x in our close-up look at the machine at Dell's display at the show, but we have since gotten one in house and have been able to put it through its paces on our home turf. Our video review of the Alienware M11x utlra-portable gaming notebook is at the link below; an image gallery and full benchmarks follow on the pages ahead...

Today we have on our testbench two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 accelerators. Just the graphics cards alone will cost you $1000. Is this something that can be justified? Performance aside, what's going on with power and heat when running two of these cards?

It has been quite some time since we looked at a Razer product last. Today we are taking a look at their imperator mouse with features such as a moving thumb button, and 5600DPI according to the specifications. We are going to compare this mouse vs some high end mice on the market so lets take a closer look.

Toshiba has been producing 2.5" external hard drives for some time now, but until recently never ventured into the world of higher capacity 3.5" external hard drives. Today we will be taking a look at Toshiba's first attempt at a 3.5" external hard drive.

Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB Drive with Paramount MoviesBigbruin.com has published a review on the Seagate FreeAgent Go 500GB Drive with Paramount Movies

Seagate has decided to try their hand at digital media distribution through a partnership with Paramount Pictures. Including a hit movie like 2009's Star Trek with the purchase of a 500GB FreeAgent Go drive is pretty cool, and being able to expand your digital collection with even more movies through Seagate may appeal to some.

The Ultra X-4 500W is more than enough for a mainstream build. A low noise 135mm fan and silicone gasket ensure that the X-4 500W will be as quiet as it is powerful. Combine this with a solid 32 amps on the 12v rail, with 24 amps each at 3.3 and 5v, and the Ultra X-4 500 looks like a very formidable power supply.

Designed to support latest Intel CPUs with integrated graphics and built around Intel's latest H57 chipset, the H57H-MUS board from ECS also features a complete bundle, composed of a USB 3.0 and SATA 6G expansion card, which makes the board a future-proof powerful computing platform, in a MATX board format.

Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 Docking Station ReviewPureOverclock has published a review of the Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 Docking Station external SATA enclosure

The Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 SATA Docking Station is an external drive enclosure that utilizes the speed of the latest technology in an extremely easy to use hot swap setup to serve all your backup and storage needs. And to show you what a massive difference that USB 3.0 makes, we'll be using a very fast Solid State Drive to show you not only how close USB comes to SATA II, but also how USB 2.0 is left behind in the dust.

The largest use for mainstream video cards is to add some graphics oomph to that off-the-shelf Dell, HP, Compaq, or whatever. With a CPU and integrated graphics designed to just get by, the mainstream video card adds extra power and life to the compromised graphics of the store bought rig. In the past I have reviewed several ATI mainstream cards, but I havent had the opportunity try an nVidia mainstream card. Today I will be looking at Sparkles brand new geForce mainstream card. Though the geForce 210 has been around for a while, Sparkle has just released this new model with a full gig of memory, to free up that system memory that is normally taken by the integrated graphics. Read on to check out the Sparkle GeForce 210 1GB video card.

Microcool Banchetto 101 ReviewOCC has published a review on the Microcool Banchetto 101

The next concern was that the acrylic was easily scratched from the modular bays, even as they are designed to be moved in and out of the case. This scratching happened at all areas where the bays were removed and even though the scratches created during the review were not large, the clear acrylic could start to look unpleasant in a rather short period of time if a new scratch is made after each time a bay is moved. But really, if this is used for hard-core benchmarking, you will see wear and tear anyhow. Along with these few things there were also some smaller issue I ran into, such as some of the thumb screws on the modular bays being hard to access making them difficult to unscrew. Not all types of screws needed are included and the included dual 80mm fan bracket is weak and broke from a simple drop to the floor.

There are well over 4 billion mobile phones in the world. Now imagine how many of those phones are stuck to the ear of someone driving a car. Annoying isn't it? And dangerous! And illegal in many places! However that's not stopping anyone now is it? Sure there are many different types of hands-free "kits" on the market to make using your mobile phone while driving much safer, but most of them are either too expensive, too complex or simply too bulky for most people. Griffin Technology has come to the rescue with an innovative way to enjoy your smart phone, in this case my iPhone 3GS, while driving. It's called the Hands-Free Mic + AUX Cable and it's ingeniously simply and effective.

PC Audio has certainly taken a major downturn in importance for the majority of users, but Asus is still fighting the good fight by offering an extensive selection of quality sound cards. Today we look at the Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe, and see what it can offer users willing to pay the steep price of entry into audiophile class PC audio.

Asus has produced a very good card that should give those willing to shell out the money nearly every feature they could ask for. From my understanding, Asus is working on some more advanced driver level features which should add some more value to the entire Xonar line. This certainly is not a card for everyone, especially considering the overall impact on the user experience when compared to a DX11 video card costing near the same level as this sound card.

SATA 6G mobile computing is just going to have to wait, but obtaining USB 3.0 is not as far away as you might think. VIZO recently launched their new SPEED-UP ExpressCard that features two USB 3.0 ports into a 34mm wide card that resembles what your first PCMCIA wireless card looks like, only a bit thinner.

Obviously the technology has changed a bit since your old WiFi card. That slot on your notebook is now tapped directly into a PCIe 1x lane and is capable of transferring data much faster now. Most likely on your notebook you have a double row 54mm slot that is much wider than the card you will see here today, but there is little need to worry; ExpressCard has been around since 2004 and most notebooks are shipping with ExpressCard 2, a PCIe 2.0 1x lane, but unfortunately for me my T61p uses the old PCIe 1.0 technology, but it should still be fast enough to blow the doors off USB 2.0 and give at least 100MB/s data transfers.

The largest use for mainstream video cards is to add some graphics oomph to that off-the-shelf Dell, HP, Compaq, or whatever. With a CPU and integrated graphics designed to just get by, the mainstream video card adds extra power and life to the compromised graphics of the store bought rig. In the past I have reviewed several ATI mainstream cards, but I havent had the opportunity try an nVidia mainstream card. Today I will be looking at Sparkles brand new geForce mainstream card. Though the geForce 210 has been around for a while, Sparkle has just released this new model with a full gig of memory, to free up that system memory that is normally taken by the integrated graphics. Read on to check out the Sparkle GeForce 210 1GB video card.

Not every computer needs to have a four million hertz processor and the world's best video card. Just like power tools, some jobs require raw power while other jobs require more finesse. When the job at hand involves video, web applications, light gaming or light office work it doesn't make sense to use a supercomputer or even a high-performance machine. This idea has become mainstream through the recent marketing of netbooks (internet notebooks) and video sharing devices, but even those platforms do not suit all light application needs. In this article Benchmark Reviews will test a nettop (internet desktop) from MSI; Wind Box model 6667BB-004US. This barebones PC kit is like an older, more capable sibling to the netbook. But how does it measure up against other alternatives?

Today we test the MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II . This product is based on the new Radeon HD 5830. MSI again made sure that their version needed to be interesting, so they designed a custom PCB, used durable quality components and then added their latest Twin FRoZr II cooler.

The end result is a product that looks just awesome, performs at baseline level, but overclocks just really well. Have a peek at what we test today, and then head on over to the article where we'll look at the MSI R 5870 Twin FroZR II edition graphics card.

While the G9T is certainly serviceable around the home environment, I'm a bit troubled by Titans choice of materials and some of the design features. Starting with the cooling pad itself, the thin aluminum veneer doesn't do much to strengthen the plastic construction, and the thin metal clips, designed to stiffen the unit when deployed, don't inspire much confidence.

The inexpensive Gigabyte H55M-UD2H may become a good foundation for a home theater or just for a simple home PC. This compact motherboard has reasonable layout and offers the complete basic functionality supplemented with FireWire and eSATA. Its key feature, however, is the full-fledged implementation of Intel HD Graphics, HDMI and DisplayPort included.